Conventional Voice AI is binary with regards to interruptions. I will employ language taxonomy to establish a state machine which dissociates the turn-taking process in back-channeling from actual floor-taking thus creating a more human-like interaction.
X, het sociale mediaplatform van Elon Musk, werd de afgelopen weken overspoeld met seksueel getinte AI-afbeeldingen van bekende personen en minderjarigen.
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Koffie blijft duur omdat een reeks structurele problemen samenkomen: mislukte oogsten, klimaatstress, strengere regels en hogere kosten in de hele keten.
De wereldwijde koffiemarkt staat onder druk door extreme weersomstandigheden in grote productielanden als Brazilië en Vietnam, waardoor oogsten terugvallen en de voorraad krap blijft. Klimaatverandering maakt traditionele koffieregio’s onvoorspelbaar, met afwisselend droogte en stortregens die plantages blijvend aantasten.
Tegelijkertijd stijgt de vraag, vooral in opkomende markten zoals China en India, zodat elk tegenvallend seizoen direct doorwerkt in de wereldmarktprijs. De International Coffee Organization meldde al in 2024 dat robusta-bonen het hoogste prijsniveau in bijna dertig jaar bereikten, een signaal dat het niet om een kortstondige uitschieter gaat.
Daar bovenop komen hogere transport- en energiekosten, duurdere arbeid en nieuwe EU-regels tegen ontbossing, die producenten dwingen tot dure herkomst- en ketentracering. Rabobank-analisten waarschuwen dat “de gemiddelde supermarktprijs voor een kilo koffie dit jaar over de 20 euro kan gaan”, zelfs als de oogsten iets herstellen.
De geruststellende gedachte dat prijzen vanzelf weer naar het oude niveau zakken, lijkt daarmee vooral nostalgie voor een tijdperk van goedkope, onderschatte koffie.
Meta-omschrijving Waarom blijft koffie zo duur? Mislukte oogsten, klimaatstress, nieuwe EU-regels en hogere kosten maken een terugkeer naar het ‘oude normaal’ onwaarschijnlijk.
NEW YORK (ANP/AFP) - De Veiligheidsraad van de Verenigde Naties komt donderdagmiddag samen om de situatie in Iran te bespreken. Dat heeft de voorzitter van de raad laten weten.
Volgens persbureau AFP blijkt uit het papierwerk dat de vergadering is aangevraagd door de Verenigde Staten.
De eerste Franse militairen die het land naar Groenland stuurt, zijn vertrokken. Dat heeft president Emmanuel Macron aangekondigd. Hij maakte niet bekend om hoeveel militairen het gaat, maar zei wel dat er meer zullen volgen.
Frankrijk doet mee aan "gezamenlijke oefeningen" die zijn georganiseerd door Denemarken. Zweden en Noorwegen doen daar ook aan mee. Ook het Verenigd Koninkrijk heeft militaire inzet toegezegd voor de 'Arctic Endurance'-oefening. Duitsland liet eerder weten donderdag dertien militairen naar de Groenlandse hoofdstad Nuuk te sturen voor een driedaagse verkenningsmissie.
Groenland maakt deel uit van het Deense koninkrijk, maar moet volgens de Amerikaanse president Donald Trump om veiligheidsredenen bij de Verenigde Staten horen. Bondgenoten van Denemarken hopen de VS daarvan te weerhouden door te laten zien dat zij het strategisch gelegen eiland versterken.
WASHINGTON (ANP/RTR) - De Amerikaanse president Donald Trump heeft in een interview met persbureau Reuters uitgehaald naar de Oekraïense president Volodymyr Zelensky. Volgens Trump is het niet Rusland, maar Oekraïne dat een vredesakkoord in de weg staat.
Op de vraag wat het grootste obstakel is voor een einde aan de nu bijna vier jaar durende oorlog, antwoordde Trump: "Zelensky". De Russische president Vladimir Poetin is volgens de Amerikaanse president bereidwilliger. "Ik denk dat hij er klaar voor is om een akkoord te sluiten", zei Trump over Poetin. "Ik denk dat Oekraïne daar minder klaar voor is."
Trump heeft in het verleden zowel Oekraïne als Rusland de schuld gegeven van het uitblijven van een akkoord.
AUSTIN (ANP/AFP) - Het platform X van Elon Musk neemt maatregelen om te voorkomen dat AI-chatbot Grok beelden genereert waarop echte mensen zijn uitgekleed. Het bedrijf kondigde de ingreep alleen aan voor landen waar het delen van dergelijke beelden in strijd is met de wet.
X meldt dat het voor alle Grok- en X-gebruikers, inclusief betalende abonnees, de mogelijkheid zal blokkeren om afbeeldingen van echte mensen zo te bewerken dat zij erop in "bikini, ondergoed of soortgelijke kleding" verschijnen.
Grok ligt onder vuur omdat er veel ontblote en naaktbeelden worden gegenereerd van mensen die daar niet mee hebben ingestemd. De procureur-generaal van Californië maakte woensdag bekend dat de staat daarom een onderzoek heeft ingesteld naar het bedrijf xAI, dat Grok heeft ontwikkeld. Meerdere landen hebben de toegang tot de chatbot geblokkeerd of zijn zelf een onderzoek gestart.
mikeleonardvisualarts posted a photo:
Greg Adams Photography posted a photo:
at the old Gare' D'Orsay (train station), Paris.
This amazing old train station is now an amazing museum.
Digg is officially back under the ownership of its original founder, Kevin Rose, along with Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. "Similar to Reddit, the new Digg offers a website and mobile app where you can browse feeds featuring posts from across a selection of its communities and join other communities that align with your interests," reports TechCrunch. "There, you can post, comment, and upvote (or 'digg') the site's content." From the report: [T]he rise of AI has presented an opportunity to rebuild Digg, Rose and Ohanian believe, leading them to acquire Digg last March through a leveraged buyout by True Ventures, Ohanian's firm Seven Seven Six, Rose and Ohanian themselves, and the venture firm S32. The company has not disclosed its funding. They're betting that AI can help to address some of the messiness and toxicity of today's social media landscape. At the same time, social platforms will need a new set of tools to ensure they're not taken over by AI bots posing as people.
"We obviously don't want to force everyone down some kind of crazy KYC process," said Rose in an interview with TechCrunch, referring to the 'know your customer' verification process used by financial institutions to confirm someone's identity. Instead of simply offering verification checkmarks to designate trust, Digg will try out new technologies, like using zero-knowledge proofs (cryptographic methods that verify information without revealing the underlying data) to verify the people using its platform. It could also do other things, like require that people who join a product-focused community verify they actually own or use the product being discussed there.
As an example, a community for Oura ring owners could verify that everyone who posts has proven they own one of the smart rings. Plus, Rose suggests Digg could use signals acquired from mobile devices to help verify members -- for instance, the app could identify when Digg users attended a meetup in the same location. "I don't think there's going to be any one silver bullet here," said Rose. "It's just going to be us saying ... here's a platter of things that you can add together to create trust."
"We obviously don't want to force everyone down some kind of crazy KYC process," said Rose in an interview with TechCrunch, referring to the 'know your customer' verification process used by financial institutions to confirm someone's identity. Instead of simply offering verification checkmarks to designate trust, Digg will try out new technologies, like using zero-knowledge proofs (cryptographic methods that verify information without revealing the underlying data) to verify the people using its platform. It could also do other things, like require that people who join a product-focused community verify they actually own or use the product being discussed there.
As an example, a community for Oura ring owners could verify that everyone who posts has proven they own one of the smart rings. Plus, Rose suggests Digg could use signals acquired from mobile devices to help verify members -- for instance, the app could identify when Digg users attended a meetup in the same location. "I don't think there's going to be any one silver bullet here," said Rose. "It's just going to be us saying ... here's a platter of things that you can add together to create trust."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
After nearly two decades of touchscreen dominance, QWERTY smartphones are staging a niche comeback, with Clicks and Unihertz unveiling new physical-keyboard phones at CES 2026. Gizmodo reports: At CES 2026, Clicks, the company behind the Clicks keyboard case and the new Power Keyboard, announced plans to sell the Communicator, a "second phone" with a QWERTY keypad. Clicks pitches the $500 phone, launching later this year, as a device primarily intended for messaging -- sending texts, DMs, Slack messages, whatever. The company didn't have a functional unit -- only a mockup dummy to fondle at the show -- but it looked cool enough, even if it'll be a very niche product. It's a cool idea, but how many people will carry a companion phone to their main phone just to shoot off a few DMs? $500 is a lot to ask for that satisfaction.
But Clicks isn't the only one trying to bring back QWERTY phones. Unihertz, makers of the really tiny Jelly Android phones and also Tank phones with massive battery capacities, also teased a new phone with a physical keyboard. The Titan 2 Elite seems to be a less gimmicky version of the Titan 2, which itself was a BlackBerry Passport knockoff but with a bizarre square screen on the backside.
Look closely, and there are some weird similarities between the Clicks Communicator and the Titan 2 Elite. We don't have dimension specs yet, but the screens seem to have the same rounded corners, and even the hole-punch camera is in the same upper-left corner. The only difference seems to be the keyboards; the Communicator uses individual keys, whereas the Titan 2 Elite's keyboard is more BlackBerry-esque. After digging into the Clicks Communicator's specs, a few other features stood out that Slashdotters might appreciate. There's a dedicated 3.5mm headphone jack, a physical "kill switch" (essentially an alert slider), fingerprint scanner and even a customizable notification LED. The last time we saw a phone with a dedicated notification LED was around 2019!
But Clicks isn't the only one trying to bring back QWERTY phones. Unihertz, makers of the really tiny Jelly Android phones and also Tank phones with massive battery capacities, also teased a new phone with a physical keyboard. The Titan 2 Elite seems to be a less gimmicky version of the Titan 2, which itself was a BlackBerry Passport knockoff but with a bizarre square screen on the backside.
Look closely, and there are some weird similarities between the Clicks Communicator and the Titan 2 Elite. We don't have dimension specs yet, but the screens seem to have the same rounded corners, and even the hole-punch camera is in the same upper-left corner. The only difference seems to be the keyboards; the Communicator uses individual keys, whereas the Titan 2 Elite's keyboard is more BlackBerry-esque. After digging into the Clicks Communicator's specs, a few other features stood out that Slashdotters might appreciate. There's a dedicated 3.5mm headphone jack, a physical "kill switch" (essentially an alert slider), fingerprint scanner and even a customizable notification LED. The last time we saw a phone with a dedicated notification LED was around 2019!
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Cerebras Systems landed a more than $10 billion deal to supply up to 750 megawatts of compute to OpenAI through 2028, according to a blog post by OpenAI. CNBC reports: The deal will help diversify Cerebras away from the United Arab Emirates' G42, which accounted for 87% of revenue in the first half of 2024. "The way you have three very large customers is start with one very large customer, and you keep them happy, and then you win the second one," Cerebras' co-founder and CEO Andrew Feldman told CNBC in an interview.
Cerebras has built a large processor that can train and run generative artificial intelligence models. [...] "Cerebras adds a dedicated low-latency inference solution to our platform," Sachin Katti, who works on compute infrastructure at OpenAI, wrote in the blog. "That means faster responses, more natural interactions, and a stronger foundation to scale real-time AI to many more people."
The deal comes months after OpenAI worked with Cerebras to ensure that its gpt-oss open-weight models would work smoothly on Cerebras silicon, alongside chips from Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices. OpenAI's gpt-oss collaboration led to technical conversations with Cerebras, and the two companies signed a term sheet just before Thanksgiving, Feldman said in an interview with CNBC. The report notes that this deal helps strengthen Cerebras' IPO prospects. The $10+ billion OpenAI deal materially improves revenue visibility, customer diversification, and strategic credibility, addressing key concerns from its withdrawn filing and setting the stage for a more compelling refile with updated financials and narrative.
Cerebras has built a large processor that can train and run generative artificial intelligence models. [...] "Cerebras adds a dedicated low-latency inference solution to our platform," Sachin Katti, who works on compute infrastructure at OpenAI, wrote in the blog. "That means faster responses, more natural interactions, and a stronger foundation to scale real-time AI to many more people."
The deal comes months after OpenAI worked with Cerebras to ensure that its gpt-oss open-weight models would work smoothly on Cerebras silicon, alongside chips from Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices. OpenAI's gpt-oss collaboration led to technical conversations with Cerebras, and the two companies signed a term sheet just before Thanksgiving, Feldman said in an interview with CNBC. The report notes that this deal helps strengthen Cerebras' IPO prospects. The $10+ billion OpenAI deal materially improves revenue visibility, customer diversification, and strategic credibility, addressing key concerns from its withdrawn filing and setting the stage for a more compelling refile with updated financials and narrative.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Hasn’t revealed how much kit did the job, so Nvidia can probably rest easy
Chinese outfit Zhipu AI claims it trained a new model entirely using Huawei hardware, and that it’s the first company to build an advanced model entirely on Chinese hardware.…
Photon Obsolescence has added a photo to the pool:
Tourism 101:
Tasman Pennisula,
Tasmania, Australia
Photon Obsolescence has added a photo to the pool:
Tourism 101:
Tasman Pennisula,
Tasmania, Australia